As you may be aware, "Carrefour" is the French word for intersection and road crossing: four cars coming together from the cardinal points of the compass.

I would venture to say that that there would be two main ways to pronounce the first syllable depending on how much French you knew. That should be where the "car" pronounciation comes from. Native English speakers without knowledge about French phonetics would not know how to handle the double "r" and eliminate it to produce "care".

As far as "four" is concerned, native English speakers should have no problem. The only time I have ever encountered a problem with the phonemes / f / and / p / has been when I was teaching Korean students. Korean speakers also have a the same problem with / r / and / l / just like Japanese speakers. This phenomenon would give way to the manifestations of "fool" and "pool".

I guess that this is just a shot in the dark as I don't know where you are in the world. Since I am a native English speaker from the US without much knowledge about French, I always pronounce it as "Carefour".

It's amazing how things have developed since the question was posted such a long time ago LOL...

I've just looked it up in Google Translator, and you can choose the language you want to listen. If you type "carrefour" and choose French, the recording will say it in French; in English, it will be completely different.:)

Google Translator is doing its best to mimic what a native English speaker would do: read a foreign word and try his or her best to pronounce it to the best of his or her ability. An alphabet represents phonemes in a given phonological context. French sounds never entered the mind of a native English speaker with no training in French phonetics.

The double 'r' would at best mark a syllable break in English, but the consonantal cluster / rf / is impossible in English. Hypercorrection or over generalization would lead an English speaker to reduce the double 'r' to just one... hence the phonetic realization [ kʰæɹ.foʊɹ ] ,standard American English, would manifest.

Google Translator is doing its best to mimic what a native English speaker would do: read a foreign word and try his or her best to pronounce it to the best of his or her ability. An alphabet represents phonemes in a given phonological context. French sounds never entered the mind of a native English speaker with no training in French phonetics.

The double 'r' would at best mark a syllable break in English, but the consonantal cluster / rf / is impossible in English. Hypercorrection or over generalization would lead an English speaker to reduce the double 'r' to just one... hence the phonetic realization [ kʰæɹ.foʊɹ ] ,standard American English, would manifest.